This commentary by Garrison Nelson, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Vermont, was written after the death March 30 of Watergate architect G. Gordon Liddy. His latest book is “John William McCormack: A Political Biography.”
In March 1990, the University of Vermont invited two controversial figures from decades earlier to discuss their lives and careers with UVM students and the Burlington community.
One was Dr. Timothy Leary, the ex-Harvard psychologist whose mantra of “tune in, turn on and drop out” extolled the virtues of psychedelic drugs that “turned on” a large segment of young people in the 1960s and 1970s.
The other invitee that evening was G. Gordon Liddy, who was the leader of President Richard Nixon’s “plumbers” masterminded nefarious election capers to ensure Nixon’s 1972 reelection. The Watergate affair that ended Nixon’s presidency was both Liddy’s masterpiece and the disaster that gave him 52 months in federal prison.
Clearly well past their years of notoriety, the two men were cashing in on their dubious fame as a retrospective tag team of decades past.
My closest colleague, Professor Frank Bryan, and I were asked to join Liddy for a pre-speech dinner at the Sirloin Saloon in Shelburne.
Then age 60, Liddy was of normal height, looked fit and, as a former U.S. Army lieutenant, had a military bearing. His hair was close-cropped and his distinctive brush mustache was unmistakable. His reputation of cooking and devouring a dead rat and thrusting his arm into an open flame to strengthen it preceded him and added to his tough-guy persona.
Since my pal Frank Bryan had fought in the Golden Gloves, I felt safe enough to ask him some tough questions.
My first question concerned the Brookings Institution, the venerable think tank two blocks from Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. I had been a guest scholar at Brookings in 1975-76 and learned that it was targeted by Liddy and his “plumbers.” Former Defense Department official Daniel Ellsberg had an office in the building to assemble thousands of files from the department that became the “Pentagon Papers.” Those documents exposed that American military leaders knew that the Vietnam War was unwinnable but, with no exit strategy to end it, cost the lives of hundreds of young Americans and thousands of Vietnamese every week.
“Plugging leaks” was the mission of Liddy’s “plumbers” and Brookings was a logical target.
I told Liddy that I had been at Brookings and I wondered why he had failed to get inside. Then he outlined his plan. He said that Brookings security was too tight so he planned to access the building by first acquiring fireman uniforms for his anti-Castro Cubans. Then he would rent a fire truck, drive it to the front door of Brookings, parking it at a sharp angle to prevent traffic from moving along Massachusetts Avenue, where Brookings was located. In the late evening, the Cuban ”firemen” would hatchet their way into the building, locate Ellsberg’s office and grab as many documents as they could. With their mission accomplished, the government would be spared embarrassment and the Nixon campaign would go on to victory unimpeded.
‘Why didn’t it work?” I asked.
Clearly disappointed, Liddy’s answer was simple, “The [Republican] National Committee wouldn’t let us rent a fire truck.”
“How could you keep that secret?” I asked. Even the least competent police department could locate anyone who had rented a fire truck, yet another flaw in the plan. He was silenced for a short while.
How about Arthur Bremer’s failed May 1972 assassination attempt on ex-Alabama Gov. George Wallace, whose candidacy was gaining political momentum? Liddy said this fell into the purview of his accomplice, ex-CIA agent E. Howard Hunt. Hunt’s plan was to go to Bremer’s Maryland apartment and scatter pro-McGovern literature throughout it.
When asked about this plan, Liddy said simply, “Howard is crazy. The police have already been to Bremer’s apartment and they have photographed all of its contents. They would know that the McGovern literature was planted.”
As a former FBI official, he knew the drill. FBI agents and CIA operatives differ. FBI agents are cops; CIA operatives are not.
Liddy was calm and even-tempered. There was none of the crazy guy routine that Frank and I had feared.
We finished our desserts and coffee and returned to campus for the main event. I paid little attention to Leary’s performance, believing that LSD was just a chemical scam. Gordon then spoke and he morphed into the unrepentant, wild-eyed crazy guy routine that he believed that he was paid to perform. I watched the theatrics and marveled at his transformation from the reasonable and articulate guy with whom I had dinner barely an hour earlier.
My dinner with Liddy may not have been as cerebral as Wallace Shawn’s “My Dinner With Andre,” but it was memorable and far more illuminating.
RIP, Gordo, 1930-2021. We hardly knew ye.
